Dr. Woodhouse stated that wolves were common on open, thin grass
lands west of San Francisco M o u n t a i n . H e recognized three species in Arizona: Canis nubills, the "dusky wolf;" Canis latrans, the coyote; and Canis frustror, the "American jackal." The dusky wolf was modern Canis lupus, the gray wolf, and Woodhouse found it abundant east of the Mojave Desert. £. Latrans and
C.
frustror were both coyotes, of which Woodhouse believed there were several species in North America.Mule deer remained plentiful until the expedition crossed the drainage of the Big Sandy River, 112 while the open valleys of sparse grass lying west of the river abounded in pronghorn. 113 Woodhouse makes
one of the first references in Arizona to hunters luring the species within range by creeping through the.grass waving a stick with a hand
kerchief attached to it.
Water was now becoming increasingly scarce, being limited to an occasional small spring, and more rarely, to a running stream. Grass remained ample to feed the expedition’s stock until the area of the Col
orado River was reached. Meanwhile, a series of Indian ambushes was
testing the nerves of Sitgreaves1 party, and Leroux the guide was wounded. 109110111112*
109. Sitgreaves, p. 94.
110. Ibid., p. 38 111. Ibid.,
112. Ibid..
113 Ibid.
On November 5, the column came within sight of the Colorado River, only to run into a hostile reception from the Mohave" Indians.
This time Dr. Woodhouse was wounded, but this did not divert his mind entirely from natural history. He observed that beaver were very abundant on the Colorado, far more common here than anywhere else in northern
Arizona.
Sitgreaves' half-starved men moved down the Colorado in the face of repeated attacks by Mohave and Yuma Indians. Fresh meat from mules that had died from exhaustion sustained the party until it reached Camp Yuma on November 30. Here, the expedition rested and stocked up on
fresh supplies. Eventually, Sitgreaves got his contingent across the Mojave Desert to San Diego.
The Sitgreaves expedition did not produce any scientific general
izations about the region covered. There was merely a catalogue of plant and animal specimens collected by Dr. Woodhouse, and only a few of these were new. The route of the party traversed some relatively unknown ter
rain, but it did not follow the direct line necessary for a transconti
nental railroad. Nevertheless, Sitgreaves* effort was an epic of explo
ration since it was a painstaking reconnaissance of forbidding and
little-known territory. His map of the area was a standard reference for those who came after him.
Nearly two years passed before the next major expedition was ready to take to the field. Organized at Fort Smith, Arkansas, in July, 1853, it was placed under the command of Lt. Amiel Weeks Whipple, the highly capable assistant astronomer on the Mexican Boundary Survey. Whipple’s 114
114. Sitgreaves, p. 47
102
party was well staffed with scientists, including Dr. Jules Marcou, a Swiss geologist, and Heinrich Baldwin Mollhausen, a German artist-
naturalist who was sent to America by Baron Alexander von Humboldt. One of the Americans was Dr. C.B.R. Kennerly, later to distinguish himself on Major William H. Emory’s boundary survey expedition. Guiding the group was to be the irrepressible Antoine Leroux.
Whipple’s instructions were to explore the 35th parallel and de
termine the practicability of this route for a railroad. He was to pro
ceed west by way of Albuquerque and Zuni, making a careful survey of all the territory lying between the Zuni villages and the Colorado River. To a considerable degree the expedition would follow in the footsteps of Captain Sitgreaves (see Fig. 3, p. 235)
At Albuquerque, Whipple’s party was joined by an auxiliary force under Lt. Joseph C. Ives, providing added insurance against damaging In
dian attacks. The expedition then moved on to Zuni, where it set up camp close to the present Arizona-New Mexico state line. A period of planning and preparation lay ahead before Whipple felt ready to negotiate the Arizona wilderness.
Dr. Kennerly, the party’s physician as well as a naturalist, lost little time in exploring the broken mesa country around Zuni. Grizzlies were common, and he remarked that they often came down from the mountain
ous areas to raid the flocks of sheep kept by the Indians in the grassy valleys. 115 On one occasion, Kennerly and Heinrich Mollhausen were taken 115
115. C.B.R. Kennerly, "Report on the Zoology of the Expedition,"
Reports of Explorations and Surveys, 1853-4 (Washington, 1856), v. IV, p. 6.
by a Zunl guide to a spring where the Indians had erected a blind from which to shoot grizzlies in ambush. This was in a rocky terrain covered with pinyon-juniper forest. The two men saw no "grey bears" on this ex
cursion, but Mollhausen describes a trail used by the grizzlies for such a long time that they had "fairly polished the rocky steps with their heavy clumsy p a w s . " ^ ^
In the immediate area of Zuni, Kennerly noticed numerous herds of mule deer feeding in the little valleys between the m e s a s . P r o n g horn were also present, but they were very shy and kept their distance far off on the plains.
118
He also wrote an account of natural historyafter dark:
At night the prairie jackal, or coyote (Canis latrans) rarely failed to approach our camp, and serenade us with his loud and varied notes. The long and dismal howl of the larger species
(Canis gigas) was occasionally heard in the distance (he is re
ferring to the gray wolf, Canis lupus); but the latter is much less numerous than the former, and was not often seen. It, too, prefers the wooded regions, and depends mainly upon the deer for a subsistence, which it hunts, and rarelv fails, after a long pursuit, in overtaking and conquering.
:One evening in November, the Whipple party stopped to set up camp near a small saline pond a few miles west of Zuni. This was in rough terrain, with small valleys interspersed with ridges covered with pinyons and junipers. In Mollhausen*s account: "Herds of black-tailed 116117118*
116. H.B. Mollhausen, Diary of a Journey from the Mississippi to the Coasts of the Pacific with ji United States Government Expedition
(London, 1858), v. 2, p. 92.
117. Kennerly, v. IV, part VI, p. 5.
118. Ibid.
119 Ibid., p. 6.
104